Historical Weather

[T. Mosley]

Hello, all:

One of my interests is weather history, as I feel we can learn more about the present by studying the past. In my ripperological studies, it is the other way around, where we learn about the past by studying the present.

Unfortunately, the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 occurred well before there were chasers and there are not even any known photographs of this storm. But, no one knows more about tornado appearances than do chasers, and the eyewitness reports of this storm are, to my knowledge, unique. Numerous of the witnesses reported that the tornado itself, wrapped in a shield cloud such that the funnel(s) was not visible, was multicolored - red, black, green, yellow, and orange are among the reported colors, and there are many reports that the underside of the parent supercell was a mustard yellow.

Has anyone ever observed coloring like this? All the funnels that I have ever seen were white, black, and/or grey, although the familiar yellow-green was often present in the cell or supercell. No other storm report that I have ever read has mentioned this coloring, and so I am asking the chasing community at large if they know of any other similar occurences.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Most weird colors I've seen around storms are caused by external illumination (i.e. sun angle, the presence and height of cirrus or altocumulus layers between the storm and the sun, whether there's reflection from cumulus towers nearby, whether dust is being kicked up by the synoptic-scale system, and so forth). I won't go over the greenish tinge from hail, as there's plenty written on that, but that's been about the only unusual illumination I've seen within a storm.

From what you've described, it sounds like there may have been a brilliant sunset and it illuminated the cloud features and rain wrap.

I take a lot of the old storm reports with a grain of salt. Exxageration is sort of a treasured American pastime.

Tim

 

[Willie Dines]

I think that Tim has got this one down , but also there are some storms that are just completely black underneath and that is just simply because of the main tower being solidly packed to the rafters.

As reguards the Tri-State tornado, having a type of "Shield Cloud", that sounds very much like that the there was alot of wrap-around, ciruclating from the base of the meso

Willie

 

[T. Mosley]

Good Points

Thank you both for your thoughts and opinions here.

While we certainly have to keep exaggeration or prevarication on the part of the witness in mind, it is noteworthy that others reported seeing colors, most notably the 'mustard gold', so I feel there is some credence there.

As this particular report occurred at about 2:30 PM that day, it would seem that sunlight would not play as great a part as Tim has suggested. Moreover, this pair of eyewitnesses never did report what nearly everyone else did - that the sky grew so dark that one could literally not see outside. In all my years of chasing and observing, I have seen it that dark during the day only once, and that was in Ft. Worth, 1963.

As the Tri-State was a quite unusual storm, lasting over 3-1/2 hours and traveling well over 200 miles (quite a chase, eh?), I really wonder if the colors observed might not be due to some rare phenomena hitherto unobserved by modern day meteorologists - or chasers. There will be more on that later, as I have my own thoughts regarding tornado formation and propagation.

Willie is most probably correct as regards the wrap-around, but this too is unusual. No eyewitnesses reported it being a rain shield; in fact, what was described most often was a "smoky fog". Author Peter Felknor characterized this aspect as the Tri-State's "strange, amorphous form". Only rarely were the funnels themselves seen, and this for over 3-1/2 hours.

I truly believe that there is more than meets the eye here, but maybe I read Fortean Times too much.